The Great Concert of the Night

by Jonathan Buckley

  Her body was brought to San Crisogono in 1865, and three years later, when the coffin was opened, the corpse was found to be incorrupt. Now she lies in a glass case, clad in a gown like a nightdress. She wears a white bonnet, fringed with lace, from which some curls of golden hair protrude. Her face—pale and softly wrinkled—has a smile of great serenity. A rosary is entwined in the fingers of her left hand. It is something of a shock to see this pretty old lady, lying in her glass box, as if in deep and untroubled sleep. But the skin of the pretty face is wax, not flesh, as is the skin of the shapely hands. The body of the Blessed Anna Maria Taigi is a doll with an armature of true bones. As I was examining the effigy-corpse, a young couple came up and stood beside me. Said the man, in the tone of someone who has chosen his words carefully before speaking: “That is utterly disgusting.” I smiled my agreement.

  The floor of the church, on the other hand, is a thing of beauty: thirteenth-century, an intricate patterning of porphyry, serpentine, white marble, grey marble. Whorls and discs and arcs and squares of coloured stone—quasi-Islamic geometries, a work of perfect abstraction, transcending the mortal, the merely figurative. It was created, we would like to believe, by craftsmen who subsumed themselves gladly to their repetitious and difficult work, to the glory of God, the supreme creator. We have no names for the artisans who made this wonderful floor. But one man has left his signature. Having paid for its restoration in 1623, a Borghese cardinal felt compelled to leave his mark: his family’s heraldic emblems, a crowned eagle and dragon, in clumsy mosaic.

  •

  Entering Sant’Agostino, I saw by the entrance a woman on her knees, weeping, at a sculpture of the Madonna. Her hands wrestled each other in front of her face. As I turned away I saw that I had mis-seen: these were tears of gratitude. Before leaving, she pinned a rosette of pink fabric to the wall beside the statue, in the Madonna’s line of sight. Many other rosettes, in pink and blue, were already attached there, with a number of padded fabric hearts, also pink and blue. This Madonna is credited with the power to effect miracles in conception and childbirth. Her stone foot has been so eroded by kisses that a silver replacement has had to be fitted. Sant’Agostino was popular with Rome’s pre-eminent courtesans, I read; they frequented the church in their bouts of penitence. Fiammetta Michaelis, the beautiful mistress of Cardinal Giacomo Ammannati Piccolomini and of Cesare Borgia, is buried in this church, as are other celebrated women of the same profession. They have no tombstones.

  In the Vatican, two days ago, I inspected the votive offerings from the Etruscan temples of Caere. The little terracotta heads, limbs and organs would have been left at the shrines by the thankful and the desperate. They are perhaps of the same family: the Etruscan miniatures; the pink and blue padded hearts of Sant’Agostino; the trephines, saws, files, bone brushes, perforators and calipers acquired by Benjamin Sanderson. In 1905, at University College Hospital, a tumour was removed from the brain of Benjamin Sanderson by Victor Horsley, inventor of Horsley’s Wax and co-inventor of the Horsley-Clarke apparatus, of which the museum owns an example. When Benjamin Sanderson amassed his collection, and acquired the property of the Percevals, was the motive not, at least in part, that of the person who makes a votive offering?

  •

  A long walk along the river, at dusk, to look at Monte Testaccio, the hill of broken pottery. A detour for the pyramid of Cestius, then back to Monte Testaccio, where I had taken note of an enticing restaurant. No table was available at that hour—or not for a solo male tourist. Returning to the river, I passed another trattoria, uncharismatic in appearance, with an exterior of smooth new brick and matching brown awnings. As I hesitated, on the opposite side of the road, three women appeared, moving towards the trattoria with purpose. One of the three, walking a little in front of the other two and apparently the designated leader, turned back to say something, and I heard an American voice. The leader seemed to know what she was doing; she had the air of someone who was confident that her companions would enjoy the experience that she was about to give them. So I followed, at a tactful distance, and was shown to a table adjacent to the women’s. The place was no more than one-third full; it appeared that we were the only foreigners present.

  The menu was not wholly comprehensible to me. As I was reaching for the phrasebook, the leader looked over, and smiled, and said: “Would you like a recommendation?”

  She was in her mid-forties, I guessed, and the youngest of the trio by a decade or so. She was slight and perfectly groomed, with a short crisp bob of dark hair and photoshoot-quality make-up. The capacious white shirt, a man’s shirt, suited her very well. A recommendation would be appreciated, I told her.

  “Go for the cacio e pepe. Spaghetti with pecorino and black pepper. Home-made spaghetti. It’s fabulous.”

  I thanked her. The decision had been made for me. Moving on to the main courses, I opened the phrasebook.

  “If you need any help,” she said; the tone was of sincere courtesy; she might have been an employee of the restaurant.

  “You’ve been here before?” I asked.

  “Many times,” she answered. She came to Italy every year; this place was one of her favourites. “Genuine cucina povera,” she said. The use of the vernacular was not for show; to my ears, the pronunciation was indistinguishable from the native. This area used to be the poor part of town, she explained, as her companions discussed their choices; the city’s slaughterhouse was here, and the kitchens of the neighbourhood made use of all the inexpensive stuff—tongue, liver, tail. “Quinto quarto, the fifth quarter,” they call it.

  “Rachel,” said one of her companions, touching her arm. “We need some assistance here.”

  A conference ensued, much of which I overheard. Rachel advised on the food and the wine, and her friends accepted her suggestions, as would customarily be the case, I felt. The forceful clarity of her speech was lawyer-like; the finish and bearing were suggestive of high income. The waiter came, and she spoke to him in Italian, on behalf of the group; he found her attractive too.

  Having placed my order, I took the book from my pocket.

  One of Rachel’s friends whispered to her neighbour. “Sure,” said the other. Rachel leaned over to me. “Join us,” she suggested. “If you’d like to.” I took a seat next to her.

  The whisperer introduced herself: April. A robust and genial woman, twice the girth of petite Rachel; she looked around the restaurant as if every inch of it proclaimed delightful authenticity. The third of the group, Audrey, wore a floral dress in which a vehement red was the dominant note; she was silent for much of the time; she seemed at heart unhappy. They were from Long Island, and were on a food tour, beginning in Turin and ending in Naples. Each had a phone, on which the stations of their journey had been recorded. April invited me to scroll through her snaps. The three women smiled at tables in Venice, Bologna, Florence, Perugia; there were many photographs of dishes and jovial kitchen staff. In a Chianti farmhouse they had taken a two-day course in the region’s cuisine; April and Audrey were to be seen slicing vegetables at an outdoor table; Rachel stirred a pot, closely supervised by the portly boss; in another shot, the boss, laughing, had an arm around the shoulders of Rachel. At many restaurants, men had felt compelled to take hold of her in this way. April and Audrey went unmolested, it would seem.

  “I detect a theme,” I commented, displaying a picture of Rachel smiling thinly next to a bearded giant, whose left hand was on her hip, while the right flourished a cleaver.

  “Everywhere we go,” said April, rolling her eyes. “Even if the wife is there, they’ve got to have a Rachel hug.”

  “It’s kind of irritating,” said Rachel. “There’s this assumption that you’re going to want to get hugged.”

  “If you’re cute,” said Audrey.

  “Or small,” April mock-lamented. “But I’ve heard they like them big down south. I’m hoping. I take your point—it’s kind of irritating. OK. But once in a while. A hug. A little hug. I could live
with that.”

  April’s divorce had been finalised last month, Audrey informed me.

  “A younger woman,” explained April. “Slimmer, younger, dumber. His secretary.”

  “Original,” Audrey commented sympathetically.

  “No, but it’s love,” sighed April. “It has nothing to do with her tits. Except he paid for them. But it’s OK. I’ve got the house. And my friends. And my freedom. Free at last, Lord. So we’re celebrating,” sang April, with a chink of glasses. “And what about you?” she asked. “I mean, what brings you here? What’s your line of work?”

  I told them.

  Rachel wanted information. She had many questions, and with every question I became more convinced that she was a lawyer. At one point, I winced at my own voice; it seemed that I was flirting.

  “This place must be heaven for you,” April ventured. She had to admit, though, that she didn’t get much of a buzz out of the museums. “Too much stuff. And too many people like me,” she explained. “And it’s like you’re under pressure to be amazed. That just doesn’t work for me. I can’t just turn it on.” They had been to the Vatican. With hundreds of other people, like a crowd for a ball game, they had trudged down that never-ending corridor, for their appointment with Michelangelo. By the time they reached the chapel, she was not in a receptive frame of mind. “Yes, I can see that this is really something,” was April’s reaction. “It’s totally spectacular. I can see that. I appreciate that it’s incredible. But I’m just not feeling it.”

  Audrey concurred: the Vatican had exhausted her. Audrey was often exhausted, I sensed.

  “But I’m not an artistic person,” April confessed. The people and the atmosphere were what she loved about Italy. “And the food, of course. I do love my food. I love my food so much. I’ll diet when I’m dead.” On invitation, she removed a forkload of pasta from Rachel’s plate. “Rachel’s the cultured one,” she confided loudly. “Her partner’s an architect. They have a wonderful house.” Rachel was instructed to show me some pictures of the wonderful house.

  After a little persuasion, Rachel produced her phone. A reel of images was called up. The house was modern, a single-storey building with huge windows and a lot of raw stone on show.

  “Show him the kitchen,” urged April. “It’s amazing,” she assured me.

  The kitchen could have accommodated half a dozen cars. In the sink and cooker areas it looked like some sort of operating theatre, and the fridge was a hi-tech monolith. At the seventh or eighth photo, a woman who was not Rachel appeared, stirring the contents of a bright copper pan. In another, she raised a glass in the direction of the photographer. She had the look of someone who was at home.

  •

  Having seen a man apparently beseeching the image of a saint, Imogen remarked that this was perhaps not an irrational action: all the evidence suggests that God is arbitrary in the distribution of his favours, so why should he not, once in a while, accede to a request from a random member of the public? The image was the comely figure of half-naked Saint Sebastian, reclining like an odalisque, his limbs adorned with three golden arrows. This is not Saint Sebastian dead. He survived the arrows, and on his recovery took it upon himself to berate the emperor Diocletian for his persecution of the Christians. Taking exception at being upbraided in this way, and by a person who by rights should have been dead, Diocletian had the young man beaten to death with cudgels, a scene that is rarely depicted. In the chapel on the other side of the church from Sebastian’s tomb are displayed one of the near-fatal arrows and a segment of the column to which the archers tied the saint. Also on show are a piece of the Crown of Thorns, a tooth and some bones of Saint Peter, an arm of Saint Andrew, a tooth of Saint Paul, an arm of Saint Roch, relics of Saint Fabian, the skulls of the canonised popes Callixtus I and Stephen I, fragments of the skulls of the martyred saints Nereus, Achilleus, Avenistus, Valentine and Lucina, and a stone indented with what one is asked to believe are the footprints of Christ.

  •

  In the church dedicated to Saint Stephen, the first Christian martyr: dozens of inspiring deaths, unflinchingly depicted. Saints boiled and skewered, flayed with spiked brushes, roasted, dismembered with blades, stretched, sawn in half (vertically, through the brain), pulled apart by horses, crushed, decapitated, and so forth. Hands and tongues and breasts are chopped off. Every mutilation is suffered with good grace, as if submitting to a haircut. There are no grimaces or howls of pain; screams would only have flattered the pagan butchers. Sacred hardcore.

  •

  Strange scene on the tram. In front of me, facing each other from opposite seats, sat a large soft woman and her male companion, perhaps forty years of age to her fifty, and considerably smaller, in all dimensions. He appeared to be a man of fretful disposition, raised to a greater anxiety by current circumstances. Their relationship, I felt, was in its early stages; he was on probation; it seemed likely that they had become acquainted online. The man sat straight-backed, knees and feet together, with a small backpack on his lap; a sheet of paper rested on a guidebook, on the backpack—a list of sights, with what appeared to be times for arrival and departure, plus entrance charges. A lot depended on the outcome of this trip, I felt. No sense of pleasure was transmitted by the woman’s gaze; her eyes seemed to acknowledge, rather, that the city had not let her down, so far. One intuited that she had often been let down. Several times the man leaned forward to lightly seize her arm. “Sweetheart, sweetheart,” he whispered, every time, pointing at a building, then at the corresponding photo in his guidebook; he might add a comment, at which she would concede a small smile, as if he had to be humoured. Again and again: “Sweetheart, sweetheart,” urgently, always repeating the endearment. Her smile was always the same. It did not appear that they had argued; there was no annoyance in her demeanour, just an affectionate condescension. He must have said “Sweetheart, sweetheart” ten times in as many minutes. Only once did she speak. He made some reference to their plans for the ­afternoon, I think, at which she responded, sharply, with something that began with: “We are doing it because...” He acquiesced immediately; sitting straight, looking directly ahead, he did not say another word. At the stop before mine she rose and moved to the door, as if alone; the little lover followed. On the pavement, she took the timetable from him, checked it, then strode off. As they entered a side street she turned, smiled, and brought her lips down onto his mouth, quickly, for a semi-second, as if stamping his face with a mark of her approval.

  •

  Ludovica Albertoni was sixty years old when she died of a fever, but the Ludovica Albertoni sculpted by Bernini, marvellously, is youthful in her fevered ecstasy. She is beautiful; the stone is etherealised. Her face is Imogen’s face, her hands are Imogen’s hands, her dying eyes are Imogen’s. Which is not to say, as Charles de Brosses quipped, speaking of Bernini’s Saint Teresa: “If this is divine love, I know it very well.”

  •

  Before the airport, time for one last sight: Sant’Andrea della Valle. In the dome, high above the floor of the church, above the golden walls, a welter of clouds and bodies; amid the celestial turbulence, the Virgin is being taken into the light of Heaven, which is signified by the circle of light in the lantern of the dome. I discern a large figure, clad in red and Virginal blue; a kneeling man, wearing black; a nude male, seated; cherubs; cloaks. Without the use of a lens, the scene is not legible from where we stand. We comprehend the action, but cannot properly see it. A painting created to be imperfectly visible.

  •

  Tonight, on BBC 1, part one of June 6, 11pm. An adulterous businessman is involved in a hit-and-run accident, and “finds himself lost in a labyrinth of lies.” The businessman is played by Richard Hatton—the Richard Hatton with whom Imogen was once involved. More of his hair has gone, and his face has lost some definition, but I recognised him immediately from the small photo in the paper. I remember the evening: we came out of the cinema near Hyde Park Corner and he must have registered Imog
en’s voice, because he turned round with some purpose, as if his name had been called. As soon as he saw her he moved in, arms wide; his delight was immense. Visually he was interesting: sharp facial bones, strong jaw, very tall, lean. Though several years short of forty, he had a receding hairline, but the profile was photogenic in a Mahler-like way. The combination of tweed jacket, white T-shirt and well-worn jeans was artful. “An old friend of mine,” was how Imogen introduced him. His quick smirk clarified the meaning for my benefit. He gave me a handshake of potent masculinity. When he suggested a drink, she looked at me, in the hope, I felt, that I could improvise an excuse. He saw the glance, I am sure, but it did not deter him.

  He bought the drinks; in return, Imogen asked the opening question: “So how are you?”